Dateline September 7, 1927 – On this day Philo Taylor Farnsworth demonstrated his radical new invention: electronic television. Prior to this all televisions (which were still in the experimental stage) used a clunky mechanical system with a rotating disk. Farnsworth’s radical design used image dissection, an electronic scanning of a series of lines. He was only twenty-one.
More amazingly, he came up with the idea when he was just a 14-year old farm boy. The brainstorm came to him while plowing a field; the plow moves across a field, then back the other way for the next row. He drew his idea on a chalkboard for his science teacher John Tolman, who was so impressed with it that he made a contemporaneous sketch of it. This proved fortuitous years later when he was sued by RCA over patent infringment. The teacher’s sketch made in 1922 won the case for Farnsworth.
Electronic television is no longer with us, having gone the way of the horse and buggy. A whole generation has now grown up viewing tee vee on a cathode ray tube that necessarily made the living room tee vee deep in dimension. Now tee vees can be hung on a wall like a painting.
Last night William Jefferson Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, officially nominated President Barack Obama for reelection at the Democratic National Convention. It was a barn-burner of a speech, which listed all the reasons why President Obama should get a second term and what separates the Democratic Party from the Republican Party in 2012. The crowd loved it because it was quintessential Clinton and, of course, they are all Democrats.
If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should.
The election is in exactly 2 months from today. Make sure you get out and vote.
Dateline June 19, 1897 – Moe Howard, future leader of The Three Stooges, was born Moses Harry Horwitz on this date. He would be joined later in life with older brother Samuel (Shemp) and younger brother Jerome (Curly) at different times in one of the longest-running comedy teams in show bidnezz.
Moe Howard began in vaudeville with “Ted Healy and his Stooges,” along with brother Shemp. Soon Healy hired violinist Larry Fine and the Three Stooges were born, more or less, even tho’ they weren’t called that yet. Shemp made one ‘Stooge’ movie with Healy and quit the Stooges to start a solo career. Moe suggested younger brother Jerome/Curly and, after they managed to get rid of Healy, this was the trio that starting making all those Columbia shorts over the years, starting in 1934, and eventually running to 190 with a few cast changes.
In 1946 Curly had a stroke and was replaced by Shemp, who returned to the act where he started. According to the WikiWackyWoo the three Howard brothers made one movie together: 1949’s Hold That Lion. However, further strokes led to Curly’s death in 1952, the year of my birth. Yet, he was very much alive for my childhood.
Shemp died in 1955, yet appeared in four more Three Stooges movies after that, since there was enough footage in the can, but was eventually replaced by Joe Besser. Columbia sold off the Stooge film library to tee vee through the company Screen Gems and that’s when and where subsequent generations learned how to poke people’s eyes out and hit each other over the head with hammers.
Their tee vee poularity led to Moe forming a new Three Stooge ensemble, replacing Joe Besser with Joe DeRita, or Curly-Joe. This trio made several feature length movies and a few guest appearances until they were reduced to a cartoon with filmed live segments bookending the whole dealie.
When he died Moe Howard left behind an unfinished autobiography that was tentatively entitled I Stooge To Conquer, which I would have loved to have been able to read. For many years I belonged to The Official Three Stooges Fan Club [and recently came across all the newsletters in my file cabinet] and read a great deal about their history. The Three Stooges occupy a very narrow niche in Show Biz: Vaudevillians who transitioned to movies who transitioned to tee vee. There were many comedians, none of them slapstick comics for obvious reasons, who transitioned to radio before taking on tee vee.
Yet, despite my love for all things Stooge, this was the worst idea for a remake ever:
Dateline June 19, 1952 – I’ve Got A Secret begins a 15 year run on tee vee.
If it’s not obvious already, the pressure to post almost every day has me looking at the calendar for inspiration. There are many times I am surprised, like now when I realize I am just as old as I’ve Got A Secret. Certainly, I would have guessed before today, it is ancient. No, it’s just me that’s ancient because I remember watching this show for years and years. Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.
Here are some magic moments from I’ve Got A Secret, some new to me, some not:
First and foremost:
We owe it all to this man, without whom none of this would have been possible:
An amazing eyewitness to history:
Groucho Marx takes over the show:
Harpo Marx with Johnny Carson on the panel
Soupy Sales, before he was well known. He had just taken his local Detroit show to a national network.
The unluckiest drummer in the world:
There really was a Col Sanders and here he was before he was world famous:
Here’s a very young Johnny Carson, with his own secret [begins at 3:09 and follows with Part Two:
This is a special find: I have always loved the comedian George Kirby.
Another comedian I always loved. Jack E. Leonard was, in my mind, a much funnier insult comic than Don Rickles.
Many magical tee vee moments were brought to us on I’ve Got A Secret.
Dateline June 2, 1981 – Tee vee’s Barbara Walters asks Katherine Hepburn what kind of tree she would be. Here she is defending herself some years later:
Dateline: May 18, 1964 – Paul McCartney is interviewed by David Frost in the full flush of Beatlemania.
It’s so funny they were talking about a possible retirement in 2010. who knew that 5 decades later Paul would still be making music and still making fans scream?
Dateline: May 12, 1960 – Elvis Presley, newly returned from the U.S. Army, serving Uncle Sam, makes his first network tee vee appearance with Chairman of the Board, Frank Sinatra:
And here is Elvis in his prime, in 1956, with one of his earliest hits:
Elvis loved Gospel Music. Listen to his sensitive treatment of the classic “It Is No Secret.”